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The picture of Czar Nicholas I racing downhill on a toboggan is juxtaposed against the image of Victoria-Britannia and the British Lion, neither of whom appears to be amused at Russia's "dangerous game," grabbing territory (beginning with Wallachia and Moldavia in 1853) and thereby destabilizing the region, as settled by the Congress of Vienna in 1815. Nicholas, indeed, whether sinister, pompous, ignorant, or simply ridiculous, was the subject of many of Leech's political cartoons in 1854, undoubtedly part of the strategy of the magazine to bring the reading public onside with the dubious adventure of conducting a land war over so great a distance, despite naval superiority. Until the advent of the telegraph in 1855, reports of Crimean battles took almost two weeks to arrive in London by sea.